my happy little pill | phan

11: Dil Howlter Would Not Approve Of This

Dan's POV

It's that time of the week when I always do my YouNow live show, and if I'm honest I'm not really in the mood. Like, it's not that I'm feeling depressed or anything, I'm just a little tired. But I can't let my Subscribers down, can I?

My bedroom is icy cold and I realise that Phil forgot to turn on the heating. Way to go, Phil. I shrug on a navy jumper to keep me warm and to cover up my cuts, and power on my laptop. My lovely, spotless, clean laptop. Phil's laptop is smothered by silly leopard stickers and logos, and I guess he likes that sort of thing but having a laptop cluttered with little stickers would drive me demented. Literally.

I wait impatiently in the queue of YouNowers (is that even a word) and tap on the side of my chair. This is the part that takes dedication and patience; two things that I honestly can't say I possess.

About twenty minutes later, some random guy is still talking about himself and telling everybody watching to follow him and shit. I roll my eyes. "Come on, guy," I whisper even though he can't hear me, obviously. "Go fuck a duck. No one cares about your dumb-ass story so go buy yourself a fucking caramel macchiato and contemplate the inevitability of death for a few hours just to spare your listeners from total fucking boredom."

Five minutes later and he's still doing ninety. I almost smash my head against the goddamn keyboard, but I restrain myself with whatever sanity that I have. "Fuck off," I cover my eyes and try to deafen my ears to block out his unusually deep voice. "Oh, my fuck -"

"Dan!" Phil pops his head through the door and I jump at the sound of his voice. God, that guy. I swear to God, living with a YouTuber is probably the best and worst thing for my health. "You're doing a lot of cursing in here."

'That's because this fucking dude doesn't understand the meaning of NOBODY GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOUR STUPID FUCKETY PROBLEMS. Phil, I've been waiting here for just a half an hour and I can feel my sanity slipping away from me. Can you get me a coffee or something before I fall asleep."

Phil laughs. He has a nice laugh. "Whoa, whoa. Calm down. Patience."

I hiss out a loud breath. Suddenly, the guy is finished with his torture session and I'm next to go live on YouNow. I'm feeling kind of jittery. Phil leaves quickly as my face pops up on screen. Remember Dan; smile, act happy, answer questions and don't offend too many people.

"Hey," I say into my laptop microphone. It's so odd to just talk to an inanimate object. It's not like filming a YouTube video because I can replay those videos and edit them a freaking dozen times before it gets posted, but on YouNow everything is one hundred percent live and I need to be really careful with what I say or else I could be sent to the Internet guillotine. I'm not even fucking kidding.

Smile, I tell myself. Act happy. Answer the questions. Don't offend anyone.

+++

"Oh, yeah," say to my silent laptop. I've been doing the live show for over forty minutes now. I laugh into the webcam as the world watches. "But why should I care what anyone thinks?"

I skim through questions clumsily, leaning backwards in my chair.

Is Phan real? a question asks. It's such a common question. I try not to stab my eye out as I scroll to skip it but end up seeing a question that reddens my cheeks and I feel heat creep across my face. It's not that it's personal or anything, it just makes me briefly panic and I dig my nails into my skin. I don't have to answer it, but I will. If I leave things like this unanswered, the phandom will be like "oh he skipped this question because he didn't want to admit that it's true" or something. The perks of being a YouTuber, right?

"Are you and Phil dating? You both live together and have been both single for a long time. Is it true that you're in a relationship?" I read the question aloud. I swallow hard and try to seem unfazed by the question by laughing it off. "No, we're not. We're just best friends, okay?" I scold myself for sounding so fucking defensive. I force a smile and I sigh heavily. "Look, I don't have any problem with people writing fanfiction and making fan-art and all that, but genuinely, Phan is not real and I know that no one is actually going to listen and believe me, but it's not real. It never was. We're just two YouTubers and a few years ago I needed a place to stay and he let me stay with him, and here we are today. We're not very social people so we don't generally get to meet girls and stuff so..." I trail off and in the mirror I can see that my face has turned as red as the Japanese flag. I force a small laugh again. "We're only friends, guys."

I look away from the laptop for a second and in the corner of the room I see a small piece of Dil Howlter fan-art and I can almost feel his eyes piercing into me with disapproval.

I'm such a bad liar.